Macario. Courtesy Filmoteca de la UNAMThe celebrated Mexican filmmaker Roberto Gavaldón was born in Juárez and worked as a film extra in California before returning to his native country, where he worked for ten years as assistant director, perfecting the technical aspects of his trade. He then launched his career and during the next four decades made over fifty features, a number of which are celebrated as Mexico’s finest. Gavaldón’s time in America makes some of these films—particularly the noirs—resonate deeply with the darkness and the cynicism that pervade American crime noirs of the 1940s and 50s. The current retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art sheds light not only on Galvadón’s supreme craft and visceral storytelling but also his profoundly pessimistic vision. Gavaldón’s early sentimental melodramas—such as his renowned debut feature, La barraca (1945), and also one of his later great epics, Macario...
- 4/24/2019
- MUBI
'Ben-Hur' 1959 with Stephen Boyd and Charlton Heston: TCM's '31 Days of Oscar.' '31 Days of Oscar': 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'Ben-Hur' are in, Paramount stars are out Today, Feb. 1, '16, Turner Classic Movies is kicking off the 21st edition of its “31 Days of Oscar.” While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is being vociferously reviled for its “lack of diversity” – more on that appallingly myopic, self-serving, and double-standard-embracing furore in an upcoming post – TCM is celebrating nearly nine decades of the Academy Awards. That's the good news. The disappointing news is that if you're expecting to find rare Paramount, Universal, or Fox/20th Century Fox entries in the mix, you're out of luck. So, missing from the TCM schedule are, among others: Best Actress nominees Ruth Chatterton in Sarah and Son, Nancy Carroll in The Devil's Holiday, Claudette Colbert in Private Worlds. Unofficial Best Actor...
- 2/2/2016
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl': Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' review: Mostly an enjoyable romp (Oscar Movie Series) Pirate movies were a Hollywood staple for about three decades, from the mid-'20s (The Sea Hawk, The Black Pirate) to the mid-to-late '50s (Moonfleet, The Buccaneer), when the genre, by then mostly relegated to B films, began to die down. Sporadic resurrections in the '80s and '90s turned out to be critical and commercial bombs (Pirates, Cutthroat Island), something that didn't bode well for the Walt Disney Company's $140 million-budgeted film "adaptation" of one of their theme-park rides. But Neptune's mood has apparently improved with the arrival of the new century. He smiled – grinned would be a more appropriate word – on the Gore Verbinski-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,...
- 6/29/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Luise Rainer dies at age 104: Rainer was first consecutive Oscar winner, first two-time winner in acting categories and oldest surviving winner (photo: MGM star Luise Rainer in the mid-'30s.) The first consecutive Academy Award winner, the first two-time winner in the acting categories, and, at age 104, the oldest surviving Oscar winner as well, Luise Rainer (Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld, 1936, and The Good Earth, 1937) died at her London apartment on December 30 -- nearly two weeks before her 105th birthday. Below is an article originally posted in January 2014, at the time Rainer turned 104. I'll be sharing more Luise Rainer news later on Tuesday. January 17, 2014: Inevitably, the Transformers movies' director Michael Bay (who recently had an on-camera "meltdown" after a teleprompter stopped working at the Consumer Electronics Show) and the Transformers movies' star Shia Labeouf (who was recently accused of plagiarism) were mentioned -- or rather, blasted, in...
- 12/30/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Although I saw it last year in Morelia's Arturo de Cordova retrospective, I find the opportunity to see "The Kneeling Goddess," starring María Félix as well as de Cordova, irresistible, at the Morelia International Film Festival. It's an amazing melodrama with noirish elements. Felix, something of a glorious amalgam of Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner, is literally statuesque, in that a nude statue of her figures prominently in both the plot and many shots. Steven Jacobs and Lisa Colpaert, authors of "The Dark Galleries," about the paintings used in film noir and gothic melodramas, are working on another book about statues. I commend "The Kneeling Goddess" to their attention, along with Rouben Mamoulian's "The Song of Songs," with its statue of a nude Marlene Dietrich. I especially enjoy the sequences set in a fantasy sailor's dive bar in Panama, where Felix is the singing star of a lavish revue.
- 10/24/2014
- by Meredith Brody
- Thompson on Hollywood
That Obscure Object Of Desire screens tonight at Bam as part of their Buñuel retrospective, July 11 - August 14).
Pauline Kael may have dubbed David Lynch “the first popular surrealist,” but the honor is more accurately bestowed upon Spanish maestro Luis Buñuel. Though his Salvador Dalí collaboration, Un chien andalou (1929), is regarded as a touchstone of the movement, it was not until later in his career that Buñuel would exploit the very meaning of the surreal, brashly straying from his contemporaries’ aesthetically driven impulses. With the respectively never-ending and never-beginning dinner parties of his elliptical masterpieces The Exterminating Angel (1962) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Buñuel’s breed of Surrealism drew itself so close to the upper middle-class quotidian, it became far more subversive than any old melting clock. The conceptual hysteria of his films is in turn grounded by a simplified mise-en-scène; the surroundings are such that any outlandish yarn appears rooted in reality.
Pauline Kael may have dubbed David Lynch “the first popular surrealist,” but the honor is more accurately bestowed upon Spanish maestro Luis Buñuel. Though his Salvador Dalí collaboration, Un chien andalou (1929), is regarded as a touchstone of the movement, it was not until later in his career that Buñuel would exploit the very meaning of the surreal, brashly straying from his contemporaries’ aesthetically driven impulses. With the respectively never-ending and never-beginning dinner parties of his elliptical masterpieces The Exterminating Angel (1962) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Buñuel’s breed of Surrealism drew itself so close to the upper middle-class quotidian, it became far more subversive than any old melting clock. The conceptual hysteria of his films is in turn grounded by a simplified mise-en-scène; the surroundings are such that any outlandish yarn appears rooted in reality.
- 8/8/2014
- by Sarah Salovaara
- MUBI
Quentin Tarantino introduces his personal 16mm print of "Frenchman's Creek," part of the excellent Arturo de Cordova retrospective in Morelia this year, with a fast-talking infectious rush of enthusiasm. He says that he discovered the film on late night television when he was 16 or 17, and that he was in an acting class with a woman who said she liked Arturo de Cordova, and when he saw "Frenchman's Creek," he completely agreed with her -- and he watched it whenever he could again, over 20 or 30 years. At the time, he didn't know that de Cordova was one of the great stars of Mexican cinema. He's only seen a couple of his Spanish-language films, he said, "and that's why it's so great to be at this festival. Boy is de Cordoba cool in this movie!" And he repeats "super cool" after he hears festival director Daniela Michel translate "cool" into Spanish that way.
- 10/26/2013
- by Meredith Brody
- Thompson on Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino is in Morelia, Mexico for the third time. Why? He's coming for the same reasons he did it back in 2010: be the curator of a film program. Tarantino landed in Morelia on Monday but it was until yesterday that things went crazy, when the director of Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained made his appearance at the principal movie theater (Cinépolis Morelia Centro) to watch the Mexican film La Zandunga (Fernando de Fuentes, 1938). It's worth noting that La Zandunga is part of the festival's program to homage actor Arturo de Córdova, for which Qt contributed with two 35mm prints from his personal collection: Frenchman's Creek and Adventures of Casanova. Ever since Morelia 2013 confirmed the surprise visit of Tarantino, many questions have...
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- 10/23/2013
- Screen Anarchy
Betty Hutton movies (photo: Betty Hutton in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, with Eddie Bracken) [See previous post: "Betty Hutton Bio: The Blonde Bombshell."] Buddy DeSylva did as promised. Betty Hutton was given a key supporting role in Victor Schertzinger’s 1942 musical comedy The Fleet’s In, starring Dorothy Lamour, William Holden, and Eddie Bracken. “Her facial grimaces, body twists and man-pummeling gymnastics take wonderfully to the screen,” enthused Pm magazine. (Hutton would have a cameo, as Hetty Button, in the 1952 remake Sailor Beware, starring Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Corinne Calvet.) The following year, Betty Hutton landed the second female lead in Happy Go Lucky (1943), singing Jimmy McHugh and Frank Loesser’s "Murder, He Says," and stealing the show from fellow Broadway import Mary Martin and former Warner Bros. crooner Dick Powell. She also got co-star billing opposite Bob Hope in Sidney Lanfield’s musical comedy Let’s Face It. Additionally, Paramount’s hugely successful all-star war-effort...
- 6/9/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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